Calling The Elephant Man "easily the best play thus far of the 1978-79 New York theatre season," Hughes offers a brief, favorable review of Pome ranee's play.

The Elephant Man, by Bernard Pomerance, is easily the best play thus far of the 1978-79 New York theatre season. (No one need remind me that that could be taken as a somewhat left-handed compliment.)

Currently at the new Theatre of St. Peter's Church in the Citicorp Building, but about to transfer to a larger, more "commercial" milieu, it has its flaws but offers the most compelling evening of drama in New York today.

Pomerance has based his play on an actual "freak" of the Victorian era, John Merrick, who suffered from a mysterious and incurable illness that caused his limbs to become twisted and resulted in apparently hideous skin excretions. The title, The Elephant Man, was the one applied...